Monument record MDO2647 - Cross dyke on Balls Hill, Sydling St Nicholas

Sections of a double-banked ditched linear earthwork is visible on 1940s aerial photographs and this may be part of an Iron Age cross dyke recorded at this location. A faint linear cropmark visible on 2002 Google Earth imagery extends SE-NW across a field from the northern end of these features and this may be a continuation of the linear earthwork, although this is not certain. The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project.

The feature now extends below the crest of a SW slope for 60 m from ST 64000227 to ST 64050224 though on the OS 25", 1902 it is shown extending for a further 40 m to the NW.

In 1955 it was described by the OS field investigator as a bank 1.5 m wide and 0.4 m high with, on its W side, a ditch 1.5 m wide and 0.2 m deep. It has since been further damaged and now appears as a SW facing scarp 2.5 m wide and 0.5 m high merging into the natural slope, with a 2.0 m wide terrace on the W side. A small counter-scarp bank (see section) may be all that survives of an original bank on the outer lip of the ditch.

Although there is now no trace of a continuation to the NW and thereby crossing the ridge at about the 800 ft contour it seems likely that the work was formerly a cross-ridge boundary dyke cutting off the Ellston Hill Spur.
Published 1:2500 survey revised. <2>

Sections of a double-banked ditched linear earthwork is visible on 1940s aerial photographs and this may be part of an Iron Age cross dyke (1, 2). The features are slightly curvilinear, running from north round to south south east for approximately 50m overall. The features are cut by a later trackway on a 1945 aerial photograph (1) and they disappear into the edge of low vegetation and trees at their southern end. The northern end meets a historic field boundary still extant in 1947 <3-4>.

A faint linear cropmark visible on 2002 Google Earth imagery extends SE-NW across a field from the northern end of these features and this may be a continuation of the linear earthwork, although this is not certain (3). The features were digitally plotted during the Dorset Upper Frome AIM project; the cropmark within the field was plotted by eye from the 2002 Google Earth image <5>.

<1> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1962 (Map). SWX1540.

(ST 64020226) Ditch (NR)

<2> Attrill, N J, Field Investigators Comments NJA, F1 NJA 4-OCT-76 (Unpublished document). SDO14743.

<3> Royal Air Force, 15-APR-45, RAF/106G/LA/218 FS 2038 (Aerial Photograph). SDO17065.

<4> Royal Air Force, 11-APR-47, RAF/CPE/UK/1974 RS 4377-8 (Aerial Photograph). SDO17062.

<5> XX-XXX-2002, Google Earth (Aerial Photograph). SDO11868.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 199231 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Nov 25 2022 11:28AM